Travel Report: LAPT7 Peru, Day 4 -- A Grand Final

The final day of play in the LAPT Peru Grand Final Main Event took a while, starting at noon on Sunday and lasting until just about 9 p.m. before Oscar Alache of Chile came away with the victory following a three-handed deal. Was kind of a neat way to end Season 7 for the tour, with eight players from eight different countries (seven of them in Central or South America) vying for the last title of the year.

Heads-up between Alache and the 65-year-old Uruguyan Daniel Campodonico was kind of curious, actually, with both players almost always just limping in from the button, the other almost always checking, followed by a lot of passive play postflop. The only variation would come with open-raises all in, although the key hand of the match saw a limped pot produce a check-bet-shove-call sequence.

Alache had flopped two pair with 7-3-offsuit, Campodonico a flush draw, and the two pair held to give Alache a big lead before he finished things off. There had been room for some postflop play, if the players had wanted to engage in such -- there were about 70 big blinds in play for a lot of their duel -- but neither chose to do much other than call or check or shove.

Third-place finisher Jerson Backmann actually won the largest share of the prize pool thanks to the three-way deal, though. When the final three went off to discuss a possible deal, I joked with Sergio Prado (blogging for the PokerStars Brazil site) that they should come back and say they wanted to play it out as a Spin & Go. (Rim shot.)

All in all it was a nice finish for the season with such a big turnout and a record prize pool (for Lima) for the LAPT. There’s a lot of anticipation surrounding the Season 8 kickoff in the Bahamas -- coming just before the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure -- as well as a lot else LAPT-related to come.

Fun spending the week with so many people excited about poker, and of course to get the chance to work with such a great group of people as are part of the LAPT.

Long day of travel ahead. Talk to you again from the farm.